White Gain vs. Indigenous Loss (2)
August 11th 2009 22:53
This was the colonial mentality: belief in racial superiority and the fire-power to back it up. One has to go no further than the colonisation of the upper Macquarie district of New South Wales between 1822 and 1825 to witness the development of Aboriginal land disadvantage, and conversely, white advantage. From the surveyor’s eye, there were thousands of acres of flat grazing land occupied by nomadic tribes who made little use of it. Waiting were the graziers eager to tame the frontier, establish boundaries and put up fences for thousands of sheep. Both government and grazier lacking the realisation that those nomadic tribes in fact stayed within defined ‘clan territories’ (Pearson, 1984, p.64) and depended on that patch of land for their very existence. A clash of cultures was inevitable. Native warriors fought with skill and bravery; the graziers and settlers, on the other hand, fought a war of attrition. With the arrival of new weapons, growing numbers, and increasing government assistance fuelled by public pressure of white deaths, it took but three years to dispossess the Upper Macquarie native of his land—one of many such incidents across the country.
Obviously dispossession is the first major leg on the road to indigenous disadvantage, a term polarised under a ‘loss of rights’ banner. White settlers applied for and were granted land that government had no right to grant in the first place, the false doctrine of Terra Nullius hard at work appeasing the white conscience—it is alright to take this advantage in land as it belonged to no one in the first place. Here the seeds of Indigenous disadvantage are sown: if the Aboriginal people have no land, then they have no civilisation. This enabled the development of racist policy for well over a century, and denied the Indigenous population citizenship in their country until 1967.
Hindsight and conjecture are useful tools in retrospective analysis, however, to take another’s land is bad enough, then to deny them any recourse in the matter by exclusion from citizenship for sixty-six years, is to systematically strip them of all rights. The obvious scapegoat employed by pre‘67 democratic governments: we only have to uphold the rights of our citizens. These are rights to ‘employment in a reasonable job; ‘quality education’; ‘freely available healthcare’, and ‘affordable housing’ (Theophanous, 1994, p.91). What excuse is there for the forty years that has followed Indigenous citizenship?
Of course, there is no excuse. However, under the false doctrine the Aboriginal peoples of Australia are not citizens of their own country or anyone else’s for that matter. Hence, government is under no obligation to grant them any rights, aside from the right to dependency as recipients of welfare. Thank god for the actions of a few brave souls that indigenous political activism was born, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (NSW) in 1922 and a decade later the Aborigines League (Vic) (Burgman, 1993, p.31).
On the 26th of January 1938 as the citizens of Australia prepared to celebrate their national day, around one hundred Aborigines gathered in a ‘Day of Mourning and Protest’ at the Australian Hall in Elizabeth Street, Sydney. Their purpose, stated by NSW A.A.P.A. member and organiser Jack Patten, was to ‘bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native Aborigines of this continent live’ (Horner & Langton, 1987, p.29). They also sought the abolishment of the Aborigines’ Protection Board and citizenship status. Unfortunately, apart from the symbolic aspect, the protest achieved little. The Aborigines continued to live as outcasts in their own country, discriminated against and denied opportunity. Seemingly the only way forward was on a path devoid of hope: extinction for the full-blood and assimilation for the half-caste. (Cont.)
Of course, there is no excuse. However, under the false doctrine the Aboriginal peoples of Australia are not citizens of their own country or anyone else’s for that matter. Hence, government is under no obligation to grant them any rights, aside from the right to dependency as recipients of welfare. Thank god for the actions of a few brave souls that indigenous political activism was born, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (NSW) in 1922 and a decade later the Aborigines League (Vic) (Burgman, 1993, p.31).
On the 26th of January 1938 as the citizens of Australia prepared to celebrate their national day, around one hundred Aborigines gathered in a ‘Day of Mourning and Protest’ at the Australian Hall in Elizabeth Street, Sydney. Their purpose, stated by NSW A.A.P.A. member and organiser Jack Patten, was to ‘bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native Aborigines of this continent live’ (Horner & Langton, 1987, p.29). They also sought the abolishment of the Aborigines’ Protection Board and citizenship status. Unfortunately, apart from the symbolic aspect, the protest achieved little. The Aborigines continued to live as outcasts in their own country, discriminated against and denied opportunity. Seemingly the only way forward was on a path devoid of hope: extinction for the full-blood and assimilation for the half-caste. (Cont.)
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